AUTHOR=Searchfield Grant D. , Durai Mithila , Linford Tania
TITLE=A State-of-the-Art Review: Personalization of Tinnitus Sound Therapy
JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology
VOLUME=8
YEAR=2017
URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01599
DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01599
ISSN=1664-1078
ABSTRACT=Background: There are several established, and an increasing number of putative, therapies using sound to treat tinnitus. There appear to be few guidelines for sound therapy selection and application.
Aim: To review current approaches to personalizing sound therapy for tinnitus.
Methods: A “state-of-the-art” review (Grant and Booth, 2009) was undertaken to answer the question: how do current sound-based therapies for tinnitus adjust for tinnitus heterogeneity? Scopus, Google Scholar, Embase and PubMed were searched for the 10-year period 2006–2016. The search strategy used the following key words: “tinnitus” AND “sound” AND “therapy” AND “guidelines” OR “personalized” OR “customized” OR “individual” OR “questionnaire” OR “selection.” The results of the review were cataloged and organized into themes.
Results: In total 165 articles were reviewed in full, 83 contained sufficient details to contribute to answering the study question. The key themes identified were hearing compensation, pitched-match therapy, maskability, reaction to sound and psychosocial factors. Although many therapies mentioned customization, few could be classified as being personalized. Several psychoacoustic and questionnaire-based methods for assisting treatment selection were identified.
Conclusions: Assessment methods are available to assist clinicians to personalize sound-therapy and empower patients to be active in therapy decision-making. Most current therapies are modified using only one characteristic of the individual and/or their tinnitus.